


Out of the Game

by islasands



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Growing Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:17:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is pursued by someone at a bar but his thoughts are elsewhere. </p><p>The song, from which this story takes its title, is "Out of the Game", written and sung by Rufus Wainwright. You might like to listen as you read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Game

"Out of the Game"

  


Rufus Wainwright

  


 

He leaned on the bar, lazily evaluating the club’s ambience, music, and clusters of shape shifters. Now and then he paid attention to the face that was currently contributing to the conversation but he was relaxing and happy to ignore what was being said. He felt that whatever it was it was something he had heard before. This was a species of conversation he knew by heart. It ran around in the captivity of social grazing like a hamster on a patch of new grass. New patch. Same grass.

When we did we run out of things to say, he wondered. It was a dispassionate rather than a depressing thought. He looked fondly at the faces of his friends. Like him, they had variously survived losses in their loves, dreams and ambitions. Like him, they had emerged with their senses of self-importance intact. It’s a chorus, that’s what it is, he thought, picking back up on his question. _“The interminable chorus, that always accompanied us…_ ” Now, who said that? I can’t remember. But it was when the forest doors opened, and the moon came out like a white fruit, and the writer of the poem knew he was about to die, and all the conversations he had ever had were silenced. Their chorus was stopped. The only sound was that of the sea lapping in the stillness of an island night. Well, if he was recalling the right poet, that was after living a life rich with loves.

He jerked slightly, his thoughts interrupted by someone asking him a question. He answered it. He went on to laugh in agreement with a joke he hadn’t actually heard. He drank his drink. As he listened to the voices of his friends he watched the mouths giving them utterance. Without exception, they all had good teeth. For some reason this reminded him of their sheltered lives. We’ve never been shot at, he thought. We’ve never watched children starve. We’ve never laid down in a tent in the desert to mate with a skeletal partner. Our tears have always dried. Our hunger and thirst, sooner or later, has always been met.

These thoughts also, after the manner of hard to bear yet must be borne facts, were not depressing. He looked down the bar and noticed a boy who by chance happened to be noticing him. He was standing with a group of friends but had that look of being set apart, of being a red poppy in an otherwise flowerless field. He was slender, fine-boned, lankily leaning in and out of the music as though he was on a boat. His hair kept falling in his eyes and he kept brushing it away. His lips seemed on the brink of smiling at private thoughts, thoughts into which the idea of Adam had clearly wandered. Adam held his inquiring glance for a moment then looked away. He carried on following the conversation and laughter of his friends but he could feel the boy’s gaze on him, a gaze that had hands.

He and his friend decided to call it a night and they made his goodbyes. He moved off but his friend lingered to finish up a conversation. As he moved through the crowd, heading to the exit, he found himself having to squeeze through a group of people, one of whom happened to be the boy. The boy reached out and took hold of his arm and Adam turned to him. He let the boy pull him sideways, then turn him, drawing him close enough for their bodies to touch. Adam looked down into the pools of his eyes, noting the pupils were dilated by the kind of lust he had always liked. Dank, sodden, glittery. Like a streaming gutter, a wet road, the residue of rain that has sprinkled on a window sill and even onto the floor.

He smiled at the boy appreciatively but at the same time removed the hand that was still holding onto his arm. Without letting go of it, he raised the hand to his lips, turning it at the last minute so that he could run his lips over the boy’s knuckles, not his palm. He shook his head at him apologetically. “I’m out of the game,” he said. He dropped the hand. He left.

When he got home he didn’t feel like going inside straight away. The night air, after such a hot day, was cool and fragrant like the air in a greenhouse. He looked up at the ordinary starry sky. He looked across the valley, noting the houses that still had lights on. He looked at the pool, gleaming darkly like water in a well. It reminded him of the way the boy’s eyes had gleamed up at him at the club, blackened by lack of light, not by depth. Our pool is not a very deep pool, he thought. Not even at the deep end. He imagined Sauli climbing out of it, his body dripping, his teeth flashing a grin, his eyes that peculiar icy blue of his Finnish progenitors, his body a pale Los Angeles gold. Where was he right now?

The idea of Sauli swimming in that very pool made gratitude rise up in his chest and brim against the sides of his thoughts. God forbid any harm should ever come to him, he thought, and then, as though a vow would ensure no harm ever could, he made a promise to himself; I will take such good care of him. He ran his hands across the deck railing and wiped his cheeks with the dew they had gathered. He took a deep breath and stood up straight. My love, he thought, my dear love. The dearest of dear. I will protect him always. I will protect him with my life. He sighed at the manliness of the task before him. Really, he could hardly wait to do it.

He went inside to skype him. They chatted about the usual things. The doings of their days. Travel plans. Silly things they had said or done, or that someone else had said or done. A stomach ache. A new article of clothing. Plans for time off. Work schedules. The usual things. The usual laughs. The usual expressions of affection.

“I can’t wait,” Sauli said forlornly. “I miss sleeping next to your strength.”

“I know,” Adam said. And he did.

He said goodnight and went to bed. I love my real life, he thought, as he and his strength fell asleep.

 

 

 

 


End file.
